Monday, February 11, 2008

I Can Name That Tune In Two Notes

What I find interesting is that David has an interesting ability to not only recognize songs, but he can do so if they're hummed or whistled. He doesn't always know the names of the songs, but he will identify some lyric or word that makes it clear he figured out the song. For example, he may not say "Theme To Sesame Street", but he will rattle off the names of several muppets from the show.

For fun, I thought I'd push it a step further and sing (badly) the first two syllables of a number of songs. To my amazement, he was right on the money, nine times out of ten! Two notes were enough for him to show off a wide smile and belt out the answer! (When you take into account that I tend to be a bit flat when I try to sing, this is an even greater achievement.)

Then he did something unexpected. He proceeded to sing more half the songs from start to finish. Yeah, he would cheat a few words here and there, humming or babbling in the missing pieces, but he managed to sing entire lines of the songs as he accounted for every last note of each song. Here's a kid who barely puts nouns and verbs together, rattling off entire lines of songs.

Could we use music to help him learn in general? While there's not much to gain in clapping when we know we're happy, understanding how one merrily rows downstream, or why so much emphasis is given to a bus's rotating wheels, perhaps we could choose songs with a more educational value. Maybe if we sing to him about conjunctions, interjections, how a bill becomes law, or why three is a magic number ... maybe ... just maybe ... he'll pick up something of value!